Lapita: The Australian connection

Abstract

Recent research in southern New Guinea, Torres Strait and north-eastern Australia suggests that Lapita users and possibly makers may have been present in regions hitherto believed to be beyond their reach. In New Guinea, the discovery of Late Lapita near Port Moresby has been augmented by findings of Late Lapita ceramics in the western Gulf of Papua. Southwest of the Gulf, undiagnostic locally made ceramics dating to around 2500 years ago are now known in the western Torres Strait. Other, somewhat younger, pottery has been found in the eastern Strait, some of it (or at least some of its constituents) from New Guinea. In addition, undiagnostic locally made surface pottery has recently been found on Lizard Island off Cape York Peninsula. This material is undated but hypothesised to be pre-colonial. Although Macassan fisherman left ceramics and other material remains on the northern Australian coast in the centuries just prior to European settlement, pre-colonial ceramics of any greater antiquity have never been found before in Torres Strait or on mainland Australia or its offshore islands. The proximity of the northern Australian find-spots to the new discoveries of Lapita in southern New Guinea, and the dating of at least some of the Torres Strait pottery to Late Lapita times, raises dramatic new possibilities regarding the course of prehistory in those areas.